Chapter 8
DECLAN
The moment we cross the threshold of the Wolfstone Abbey, the pack’s ancestral home, the protective wards snap into place behind us with an almost audible hum.
She feels it too—I can tell by the way her breath catches, the way her eyes widen as she looks around the space that serves as the heart of pack territory.
The isolation here is absolute. No one can reach us, no one can sense us, and for the first time since I laid eyes on her at the ferry, I feel like I can breathe.
Except I can't breathe at all.
Because she's here. In pack territory. Her scent is everywhere now, vanilla and something uniquely her, mixing with the cedar and smoke that clings to everything in these walls.
The mate bond, which has been a constant pull in my chest since I first saw her step off the ferry, intensifies to the point of pain.
My wolf is clawing at my control, demanding I claim what's ours, what's been ours since before either of us knew the other existed.
"This is amazing," she says, walking further into the main room. Her fingers trail along the back of my leather couch, and I have to suppress a growl at seeing her touch my things. The wolf snarls its approval. Ours. "I can sense the wards. They're like... layers of energy? How many did you set?"
"Seven." My voice comes out rougher than I intend. "Overlapping. Different purposes. Privacy, protection, concealment."
She turns to face me, and the sight of her here at Wolfstone does something primal to my chest. She belongs here. She's always belonged here. Her sharp mind is already working—I can feel her curiosity through the incomplete bond, sense it radiating off her like heat.
"Seven is significant in magic, isn't it?" she muses, walking to the wall of windows that overlooks the forest. "But you're not using conventional magic, are you? This is something else. Something older."
"Pack magic," I confirm, forcing myself to stay where I am rather than closing the distance between us. "It's tied to the land, to bloodlines. My family has held this territory for more than two hundred years."
"Two hundred...” She spins to face me again, and I watch her mind race. "That would put your pack's establishment here in the early 1800s at the latest. During the Highland Clearances?"
I move then, unable to help myself, crossing to the kitchen island that separates us.
I need the barrier. I need something between us or I'm going to lose what little control I have left.
"My great-great-grandfather established this territory after his pack was driven from the mainland by hunters.
The Clearances gave them cover—while humans were being displaced, shifters moved in the chaos. We've held Skara ever since."
She leans against the window, completely unaware of how the fading sunlight creates a halo around her, how it makes her look like something ethereal and untouchable.
Except she's not untouchable. She's my mate, and every instinct I have is screaming at me to touch her, claim her, make sure she can never leave.
"Hunters," she repeats. Through the bond, I feel her shift from curiosity to something sharper—investigative instinct kicking in. "There were organized hunter groups in the 1800s? Are there records? Documentation?"
“No.” The word comes out harsher than I mean it to. "Most of the packs they killed didn't survive to keep records."
Her expression softens with understanding, with empathy that makes my chest ache. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be insensitive."
She pushes off from the window, taking a step toward me, and her determination flows through the bond between us. "But there's so much I don't know. So much I need to understand. The mate bond—how does it work?"
My knuckles go white against the granite counter. Through our connection, I feel her building to something, that reporter's instinct to dig deeper, ask harder questions.
"When did you know I was your mate?"
Another step closer. My wolf tracks every movement.
"The moment you stepped off the ferry," I force out. "The second I caught your scent. My wolf knew instantly."
Her breath catches at the admission, and I feel her processing that. That having known that, I have refrained from saying anything.
"So what happens now?" Her voice is quiet, careful.
"If you agree, there's a claiming bite." I force the words out, watching her face. "It's how shifters mark their mates permanently, creating an unbreakable bond."
She's silent for a moment, and I can see her thinking through the implications. "A bite."
"There is a transfer of my DNA through the bite. My wolf's essence mixing with yours." I pause, knowing this next part will change everything. "For humans, it means transformation. You'd become a shifter."
Her eyes widen, and the scent of her fear spikes sharp in the air. "I'd turn into a wolf?"
"Eventually, yes. If your body accepts the change—and with fated mates, it almost always does.
Wolf DNA is strong enough to override human genetics.
" I keep my distance even though every instinct screams to close the gap between us.
"You'd be able to shift, run with the pack.
Gain our strength, our healing, our lifespan. "
She takes a step back. "But you're talking about fundamentally changing what I am."
"Yes. Eliza." Her name is a growl, and she stops mid-sentence, her eyes widening slightly.
"Oh." She blinks, and I watch realization dawn across her features. Through the bond, her curiosity transmutes into something else—awareness, heat, nervousness that makes my pulse spike. "Oh. The bond. You're feeling what I'm feeling."
Not completely. Not yet. But enough. Enough to know that beneath all those questions, beneath that sharp journalistic mind always chasing the truth, she wants this as much as I do.
"I need...” I grip the edge of the counter hard enough that I hear the granite crack slightly. "I need you to understand what you're choosing if we do this."
She takes another step closer, and it takes everything in me not to vault over the counter and close the distance. "I'm listening."
"The claiming bite is permanent," I force out, each word a battle.
"It will mark you as mine to every supernatural creature who sees it.
But more than that—it will change you. My DNA will overwrite yours.
You'll become shifter. You'll be Pack, and eventually, you'll shift.
You'll be pulled into our politics, our wars, our world. There's no going back from it."
"I understand." Her voice is steady, sure. She takes another step, and now she's at the edge of the counter, only feet away from me.
"You don't." I shake my head, trying to make her see reason even as the wolf howls in protest. "You can't. You're human.
You have a career exposing the truth, a normal life.
I'm offering you danger, violence, a world where you'll always be at risk because you're mine.
Enemies will use you to get to me. You'll be a target. "
"Declan." She says my name softly, and it's my undoing. "Do you want me?"
The question is so simple, so direct, and the answer tears out of me before I can stop it. "More than I want my next breath."
"Then stop trying to talk me out of it." She moves around the counter, and I should back away, should maintain distance, but I'm rooted to the spot as she approaches.
"I've spent my entire career chasing dangerous stories, asking questions people don't want answered, going places I shouldn't go.
Maybe this is reckless. Maybe I should be terrified.
" She's close enough to touch now, close enough that the heat radiating off her skin makes my control splinter.
Through the bond, I feel her resolve, fierce and unshakeable.
"But I'm not. I'm choosing this. I'm choosing you. "
"You need to be sure." My hands are shaking with the effort of keeping them at my sides. "Once I claim you, once the bond is complete, there's no...”
Her lips crash against mine with bruising force.
She rises on her toes, both hands fisting in my shirt hard enough that I hear fabric strain.
She yanks me down to her level, eliminating the distance between us with single-minded determination.
The kiss is all heat and demand—no hesitation, no second-guessing, just raw want that mirrors the hunger clawing through my chest.
For one stunned heartbeat, my brain short-circuits. She kissed me. My mate kissed me first.
Then my wolf explodes to the surface. The iron control I've been maintaining—the careful distance, the measured responses, the constant vigilance—shatters like glass.
I haul her against me, eliminating every inch of space between us.
One hand drives into her hair, fingers tangling in the silky strands, angling her head exactly where I want it.
My other hand clamps on her hip, fingers digging into the soft flesh hard enough that I know I'll leave bruises—five perfect finger-shaped marks that will brand her as mine even before the claiming bite.
She gasps against my mouth, and the sound vibrates straight through my chest. Not fear.
Not pain. Pure, undiluted need that tastes like lightning on my tongue.
The incomplete bond thrums between us, carrying the spike of her desire, the way her pulse is hammering, the heat flooding through her body.
I tilt her head back further, my tongue sweeping past her lips to claim her mouth properly.
She doesn't yield—she surges forward, her tongue sliding against mine in a way that's more battle than surrender.
The slick heat of her mouth, the little sounds she makes when I bite her lower lip, the way her nails dig into my shoulders hard enough to draw blood through my shirt—it all feeds the fire burning through my veins.
A growl rumbles up from deep in my chest, rough and possessive and barely human.
Mine. The word echoes through every cell in my body.